It’s only a matter of time before we have something like this.
Author: Eugene Fischer
This is Hermine, who came to visit Bexar county today. Thank you for not destroying the car I bought yesterday, Hermine, like you did several other people’s cars. And power lines. And houses.
First time in 25 years I’ve lived in San Antonio that we’ve gotten a direct hit from a tropical storm.
Clever, Google. Very clever.
Here’s a roundup of some things that are worthy of note.
• The very best thing to happen recently is Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, overturning prop 8 and granting homosexuals the right to marry in California. The whole decision can be downloaded here, but there are articles all over the place dissecting the good bits. The most important part, though, is this:
Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.
Thank you, Judge Walker, for doing your job well. And, as C. E. Petit notes, for being willing to take a correct position that will probably make you permanently unable to ever be confirmed to an appellate court.
• It is not a good thing at all that Christopher Hitchens has esophageal cancer which has metastasized and will likely soon kill him. But his essay in Vanity Fair on the experience of learning about it and getting treatment is as powerful as anything he’s written. Speaking simultaneously about the side effects of chemotherapy and the militaristic language which is so frequently used when discussing cancer, he writes, “In the war against Thanatos, if we must term it a war, the immediate loss of Eros is a huge initial sacrifice.” It’s a piece well worth reading. “Tropic of Cancer.”
• Charles Stross has been thinking some very clever thoughts about the hard limitations of space colonization. Most recently he has written an excellent explanation of why the practice is fundamentally incompatible with libertarian ideology. It’s an important reality check against having read too much Heinlein. (And yeah, I love me some Heinlein, but that joke is spot-on.)
• RadioLab is one of the best programs on the radio, and lately they are increasingly on the internet as well. To go with a recent podcast they have released a beautiful video exploring the concept of a moment. Utterly lovely.
Driving down the highway yesterday I passed a man riding a sufficiently unusual device that I pulled my car off the road and walked back along the shoulder to investigate. The man turned out to be John MacTaggart, the CEO of Pterosail Trike Systems, and he is in the process of riding one of his company’s products from San Diego, California to Saint Augustine, Florida.
John’s company makes wind-powered recumbent tricycles. When I passed him John had the sail stowed and was getting along by pedaling, but there are sailing videos on his website. Difficult to see in this picture is the flexible solar panel over John’s head which serves as dual sun shade and iPod charger. The website also shows a camping add-on where the mast serves as the central pole of a teepee-style enclosure (claimed to be able to sleep six, though that seems like overkill to me for a one-person vehicle).
I’ve read plenty of stories that feature sail-powered land transport, but this was my first real world encounter with the concept. I can’t quite decide if it felt more like seeing a glimpse of a techno-optimist sustainable energy future or a Bacigalupian calorie economy dystopia. Strange to think that the Venn diagram of those two milieus may have some overlap. But it’s an elegant and fascinating device. Continued good luck to John on his trip across the country.
Inspired by a conversation with a friend, and my growing interest in Erik Verlinde’s entropic construction of gravity, here is a video of Raphael Bousso of UC Berkeley giving a fairly non-technical lecture explaining the holographic principle. Dr. Bousso does a good job of building up to concepts like Planck length and Schwarzschild radius (a term I don’t recall him actually using in the video) from simple principles.
An aside: I don’t recall having been explicitly introduced to the idea that the density of a black hole decreases as its mass increases before. In fact I’m not sure that black hole density ever came up at all in my modern physics class, which is the only place I worked with Swarzschild radii. It’s obvious once presented, but when I got to that part of the video I was shocked to find I had been completely unaware of such a fundamental characteristic of black holes.
Last week it was canceled because a thunderstorm knocked out power to the theater, but last night I finally got to drive downtown through a less intense thunderstorm to my first improv rehearsal. I was the only first-timer in the very welcoming group, and I think I acquitted myself fairly well. I stayed reactive for the first few games, getting a feel for everyone’s style, but did lead one scene toward the end. I’m still waiting for the opportunity to get feedback on that. We played a couple of naive games in which one player tries to guess an object/situation based on leading commentary from all the other players. I was never in the naive role, but coming up with the leading questions is basically a foreshadowing/information release problem, and so fitted nicely into my existing skill set. One of the more senior members of the group complimented me on my questions in those games. After that we did an improvised competitive rhyming song, at which I was much less successful.
In fiction writing I am used to going over my self expression at the sentence level dozens of times. My comfort zone has me doing revision after meticulous revision—perhaps to a fault. I was attracted to the idea of trying improv to get outside of my own head; to put myself in a situation where engaging my internal editor wasn’t an option. I think I’m going to enjoy learning to do improv for its own sake, and the mental skills I develop should be helpful to me in other areas. In the meantime I’ve ordered this book to help me keep my tools sharp between rehearsals.
My parents recently had the carpet on the second floor of their house replaced. My father’s office is up there, historically a dense and chaotic ecosystem of files and books and four decades of computer electronics. All of this had to be temporarily clearcut for the carpet to be changed, and as my father reconstitutes the room he is taking the opportunity to go through his papers and impose less stochastic organizational principles upon them. And so, last night, as I was visiting my parents for a family dinner, my father casually mentions to my mother, “Oh, I was going through some things, and guess what I found?”
“What?”
“The world’s best Long Island iced tea recipe.”
“You mean from all those years ago?” asked my mother.
“Yes! The one Rich Roberts gave us.”
“Oh, neat,” said my mother.
And, curiously, the conversation seemed in danger of ending there. So it fell to me to ask, “Well, when are we trying it?”
A few minutes of preparation, pouring, and tasting later I told my parents they needed to give me a copy of the recipe to post online.
“I don’t think so!” said my mother.
“What? Why not? Don’t you want there to be more and better Long Island iced teas in this world?”
Eventually I secured permission. “But on one condition,” my mother said. “You have to post the whole story of how we got it.”
“Okay. Deal. What’s the story?”
————————————
My mother grew up in Chicago, eating at Pizzeria Unos, a famous Chicago-style pizza joint opened in 1943. During the late 70s my parents lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and were both sufficiently enamored with the place that they would regularly drive the 4+ hours from Ann Arbor to Chicago for an Unos dinner. One night in 1979 my mother and her friends put a blindfold on my father, packed him into a car, and drove for something much less than four hours before marching him into a building, sitting him down, and removing his blindfold inside what was, impossibly, Unos. The restaurant had franchised; a branch had been opened in Ann Arbor by a guy named Rich Roberts, and my mother had secured a reservation for opening night.
Thereafter my parents ate at both frequently, and passed Rich notes on things that the original location was doing that he wasn’t, so he could improve his operation. (Me: “You conducted industrial espionage on your favorite pizza place?” My Mother: “Well, yes. But motivated purely by self interest. Rich was so much closer to where we lived.”) Eventually Rich began to innovate, which got him in trouble with the franchise managers. He had my parents write a letter on his behalf, outlining in detail what things he was doing differently, and why they were improvements. The relationship between my parents and this restaurateur was apparently a cozy one. My father reports that several years after they had moved away from Ann Arbor, he found himself in Michigan for a conference and took a road trip to Unos. Rich was there, told him that the staff still talked about the guy brought in blindfolded on opening night, and comped his table.
Rich’s Unos was known not just for its pizzas, but for its Long Island iced teas as well. And so before they moved across the country, they prevailed upon Rich to have his bartender write down for them the recipe.
————————————
THE WORLD’S BEST LONG ISLAND ICED TEA (circa 1979, with thanks to Rich Roberts)
- Fill a 50 oz. pitcher 3/4 full with ice. Add the following:
- 2 oz. vodka
- 2 oz. gin
- 2 oz. rum
- 2 oz. tequila
- 1/2 oz. triple sec
- 2 oz. orange juice (unless doubled, see below)
- 2 oz. Daley’s Cocktail sweet and sour mix (if using another brand, double amount of orange juice)
- Fill with Coca Cola or Pepsi. (Pepsi preferred)
It took me 500 words to earn this. Go forth and drink.
I’ve been in blog hibernation for a while, and it may continue a while longer, but this meme caused me to stir–if for no other reason than because I want this list of writers in a place I can easily find it.
First, the wonderful 3 minute video that inspired it:
Then the meme:
Bold the women by whom you own books
Italicize those by whom you’ve read something of (short stories count)
*Star those you don’t recognize
Andre Norton
C. L. Moore
Evangeline Walton*
Leigh Brackett
Judith Merril*
Joanna Russ
Margaret St. Clair*
Katherine MacLean*
Carol Emshwiller
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Zenna Henderson*
Madeleine L’Engle
Angela Carter
Ursula LeGuin
Anne McCaffrey
Diana Wynne Jones
Kit Reed*
James Tiptree, Jr.
Rachel Pollack*
Jane Yolen
Marta Randall*
Eleanor Arnason*
Ellen Asher*
Patricia A. McKillip
Suzy McKee Charnas*
Lisa Tuttle*
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Tanith Lee
Pamela Sargent
Jayge Carr*
Vonda McIntyre
Octavia E. Butler
Kate Wilhelm
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro*
Sheila Finch*
Mary Gentle
Jessica Amanda Salmonson*
C. J. Cherryh
Joan D. Vinge
Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Ellen Kushner
Ellen Datlow
Nancy Kress
Pat Murphy
Lisa Goldstein*
Elizabeth Ann Scarborough*
Mary Turzillo*
Connie Willis
Barbara Hambly*
Nancy Holder
Sheri S. Tepper
Melissa Scott*
Margaret Atwood
Lois McMaster Bujold
Jeanne Cavelos*
Karen Joy Fowler
Leigh Kennedy*
Judith Moffett*
Rebecca Ore*
Emma Bull
Pat Cadigan
Kathyrn Cramer
Laura Mixon*
Eileen Gunn
Elizabeth Hand
Kij Johnson
Delia Sherman
Elizabeth Moon
Michaela Roessner*
Terri Windling
Sharon Lee*
Sherwood Smith*
Katherine Kurtz*
Margo Lanagan
Laura Resnick*
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Sheila Williams
Farah Mendlesohn
Gwyneth Jones*
Ardath Mayhar*
Esther Friesner*
Debra Doyle*
Nicola Griffith
Amy Thomson*
Martha Wells*
Catherine Asaro*
Kate Elliott
Kathleen Ann Goonan
Shawna McCarthy
Caitlin Kiernan
Maureen McHugh
Cheryl Morgan
Nisi Shawl
Mary Doria Russell
Kage Baker
Kelly Link
Nancy Springer
J. K. Rowling
Nalo Hopkinson
Ellen Klages
Tanarive Due*
M. Rickert
Theodora Goss
Mary Anne Mohanraj
S. L. Viehl*
Jo Walton
Kristine Smith*
Deborah Layne*
Cherie Priest
Wen Spencer*
K. J. Bishop
Catherynne M. Valente
Elizabeth Bear
Ekaterina Sedia
Naomi Novik
Mary Robinette Kowal
Ann VanderMeer
That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. And I think I can scrape up that many. First, some good news: my story “Husbandry” was given an honorable mention by Ellen Datlow for her anthology Best Horror of the Year Vol. 2. Thanks so much, Ellen, I’m thrilled to make your longlist.
Next, a digital version of the April/May double issue of Asimov’s, containing my story “Adrift,” is now available from Fictionwise. If you wanted to read “Adrift” but were unable to find a physical copy of the magazine, you can now download it here for about $5.
I need a third thing. How about a weird Turkish knockoff of Star Trek? It is based on the first episode of the show, “The Man Trap,” and has English subtitles. It steals footage from the original for effects shots and when the opening credits run too long for the Star Trek theme, they cleverly borrowed music from other science fiction shows to make up the difference. And the description says that it features once popular Turkish character called Omer the Tourist.